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Pakistan Pushes Back on India's Claim of 'Two-Front' War

Ayaz Gul

   Pakistan's military has rebutted claims it is colluding with close ally
   China to try to engage rival India in a "two-front" war in the disputed
   region of Kashmir.

   A senior army commander instead blamed Indian border forces Wednesday
   for escalating tensions along the Line of Control (LoC), which
   separates Pakistani- and Indian-controlled parts of the Himalayan
   territory.

   Major General Amer Ahsan Nawaz, the top commander of Pakistani troops
   in Kashmir, claimed that India has so far committed nearly 2,000
   violations of a mutual cease-fire in Kashmir this year, targeting
   mostly civilian populations and inflicting dozens of casualties on
   them.

   The general was briefing a group of reporters the military flew to the
   Chirikot sector on the 780-kilometer LoC to witness the plight of
   villagers living along one of the most militarized frontiers in the
   world.

   "There is no grand design of fighting a two-front with Indians as far
   as we are concerned," Nawaz said in the interaction arranged on a
   hilltop post just three kilometers from the LoC and overlooking Indian
   military positions.

   "This is a fear, this is a narrative that the Indians have, and they
   want to propagate, and they want to create that kind of stimulant in
   their local dynamics that there is a possibility of a two-front" war,
   the Pakistani general asserted.

   Nawaz was responding to questions about India's concerns that Pakistan
   and China, which also controls parts of Kashmir, were "collusively"
   trying to mount military pressure on India.

   Tensions between India and China are at their worst in decades
   following a clash last month over their disputed border in the
   Himalayas that killed 20 Indian soldiers. Chinese and Indian troops
   reportedly remain deployed eyeball-to-eyeball along what is known as
   the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

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